Orientation contrast sensitive cells in primate V1 a computational model

Abstract

Many cells in the primary visual cortex respond differently when a stimulus is placed outside their classical receptive field (CRF) compared to the stimulus within the CRF alone, permitting integration of information at early levels in the visual processing stream that may play a key role in intermediate-level visual tasks, such a perceptual pop-out [Knierim JJ, van Essen DC (1992) J Neurophysiol 67(5):961–980; Nothdurft HC, Gallant JL, Essen DCV (1999) Visual Neurosci 16:15–34], contextual modulation [Levitt JB, Lund JS (1997) Nature 387:73–76; Das A, Gilbert CD (1999) Nature 399:655–661; Dragoi V, Sur M (2000) J Neurophysiol 83:1019–1030], and junction detection [Sillito AM, Grieve KL, Jones HE, Cudiero J, Davis J (1995) Nature 378:492–496; Das A, Gilbert CD (1999) Nature 399:655–661; Jones HE, Wang W, Sillito AM (2002) J Neurophysiol 88:2797–2808]. In this article, we construct a computational model in programming environment TiViPE [Lourens T (2004) TiViPE—Tino’s visual programming environment. In: The 28th Annual International Computer Software & Applications Conference, IEEE COMPSAC 2004, pp 10–15] of orientation contrast type of cells and demonstrate that the model closely resembles the functional behavior of the neuronal responses of non-orientation (within the CRF) sensitive 4Cβ cells [Jones HE, Wang W, Sillito AM (2002) J Neurophysiol 88:2797–2808], and give an explanation of the indirect information flow in V1 that explains the behavior of orientation contrast sensitivity. The computational model of orientation contrast cells demonstrates excitatory responses at edges near junctions that might facilitate junction detection, but the model does not reveal perceptual pop-out.